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Sunday, 15 January 2017

New Zealand's external debt position

A couple of weeks ago I re-tweeted a media release from Steven Joyce on New Zealand's 2016 economic growth numbers, which came in at a solid 3.5% p.a. driven by growth in transport (3.7%), construction (2.1%), business services (2%) and manufacturing (1.2%). One interesting tidbit caught my eye:

The Current Account deficit was unchanged at 2.9 per cent for the year, well below the long-run average. New Zealand’s external debt was 58 per cent of GDP, compared with 83.8 per cent of GDP back before the GFC in 2008.